


Singing in the Dark

by amberite



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Bards, Claustrophobia, F/M, Gen, Halfling Protagonist, Neutral-to-evil Party, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberite/pseuds/amberite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not what Wynne signed on for. This is not killing monsters. She knows how to deal with monsters; her blade goes through them just fine and she laughs and stands on their corpses and sings songs of triumph.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Singing in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teShara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teShara/gifts).



This is not what Wynne signed on for. This is not killing monsters. She knows how to deal with monsters; her blade goes through them just fine and she laughs and stands on their corpses and sings songs of triumph.

The others think she's a little bit crazy. Of course she's a little bit crazy. That's obvious, she thinks. It comes with the territory. You don't leave a perfectly good life in a quiet halfling village to go run around singing songs of courage and killing horrors from the dark unless there is something wrong with you, some bloodlust or emptiness or need for motion that other people just don't have.

Except her comrades do have that, which is why they are there with her. Well, she's not sure about Flebert, who looks at everyone else with an expression of hapless despair, and goes on healing them anyway. But whatever drives him is a different sort of dissatisfaction. Shay with her poisoned knives and clockworks - Wynne would suspect that Shay could turn on her at any time, except that she so clearly needs allies to tell gleefully about her betrayals. Harianne, who never met a sword she didn't like, including the ones pointed at her, because she considers them to be gifts she has to earn from their owners.

And then there is Artigan.

At least for a little while longer.

Hopefully for a lot longer. If Wynne can make it through to him. She shoves aside another rock, desperately careful. The wrong movement could start another cave-in, and then they'd both be toast. Having divine magic laid aside to resurrect one's comrades-in-arms does not help if one cannot get near them, and the nearest help is a day's journey at least, and it might be too late after that.

She doesn't want to think about that possibility. Knowing him, he might do the lich thing, and she _really_ doesn't want to think about that. She shudders, not from the cold.

Hells. _I wasn't made for this_ , Wynne thinks, but on some level, she was, just by virtue of being smaller than everyone else in her group.

She never hated being a halfling before this year. It was just what she was. But now there is Artigan, and he is one of those humans who can't see past the height thing, and the gift with words that makes Wynne what she is seems to jam like a bad wheel when she sees him.

The worst part is that he _does_ like her - enough to trade jokes and stories, enough to let down his guard. Maybe the reason he lets down his guard around her is that very same dismissive outlook towards halflings; she can't tell. Everything about him is aloof, practiced, but she catches him sometimes being otherwise.

Right now, she hates being a halfling and also loves it. Every slithering movement on her belly reminds her that she is the only one who can save him. That she must take point.

Wynne doesn't know when she started singing a tune under her breath to bring her courage up. She keeps it going, though.

It's not a known song; it's improvised. But the words just come. They're doggerel, but she can rhyme in her sleep and she needs it right now, so badly. Thin and shaky at first, but then stronger, and it helps her keep her rhythm with the crawling, and helps her control her breathing - and the air is limited in here.

"O, our brave band is a beacon of bright things,  
We've taken down dragons and put dead to rest  
We know how to run and we know how to fight things  
But to crawl through the dark is a still sorer test..."

The flicker of torchlight that illuminated her path from behind has faded to nothing, now. Wynne whispers a few words and sets a cantrip into motion, a little firefly of magic that hovers before her. She hadn't wanted to do this. It shows how closed-in the way ahead is, and something in her stomach clutches in despair. Quickly she resumes singing.

"O, how I wish for a demon to slay  
Or just for the sight of a sarcastic smile...  
It's seeing your eyes at the end of the day  
That makes all of the bleeding and sweating worthwhile..."

As she sings, she pulls herself forward. Another sharp, broken rock bruises her ribcage, compresses her stomach, shoves the air and the song right out of her, but already she's composing the next verse in her mind. Thinking of the energies that swirl from his hands as he readies a spell to loose. The brittle look of mayhem in his eye.

She claws her way around the rock, bloodying her fingers, panting from the effort of passing through the narrow gap.

The tunnel through the rubble widens, a little, up ahead, but it still seems to dead-end. It must turn. It must...

Being so alone and desperate, with blackness in front of her and blackness behind her, frees her tongue and she's singing things she's thought for so long, without even thinking about them first.

"Once in the night you were locked deep in learning,  
I stood by your back - you did not see me there,  
But hours I watched, bewitched by your baritone,  
The halo of power that danced in your hair...

The riddle you write me, it runs rings around me,  
The secrets you keep and the secrets you tell,  
If you only could see through the madness that binds me,  
I think I would follow you straight into Hell..."

She can't see him yet, but she knows she must be getting closer.

And then the most amazing or most embarrassing thing happens. A thready voice rises in the darkness. It has the disharmony of a voice trained for chanting but not for singing; it answers back.

"The mage never knew that the bard could be watching,  
Or that her gaze ... meant more than a lark..."

Uncertain. Pausing after each line, or sometimes partway through a line, because he is not a bard and because he can barely get a breath. Wynne is so stunned that any ability to respond and complete the stanza for him is shocked out of her entirely, and by the time she begins thinking of what to do next, he is singing again. His voice is weak but surer, as if he has thought out the lines entirely before he sings them, in the methodical way he has of doing everything.

"He never once thought he was something to look at,  
Bony and homely and bound to the dark..."

Wynne is coming up on him now, still crawling flat on her belly, but the passage is widening. She can see a flicker of movement in the distance, in the pale witchlight. "Bound to? I thought you... liked it?" She forgets herself, stops singing, just answers verbally.

"It's complicated," the mage sighs heavily. "I don't regret all my choices, but... they've limited me. Wynne, I thought I was going to die here... I'm still not sure I shouldn't."

"I'm coming to get you out, Artigan. I'm almost there."

"It won't be easy... I've used my spells just to get breathing space, and I'm too injured to lift anything..."

"Good thing I brought healing potions." She feels around and checks her belt to make sure the flasks are still in place. "Thank the Gods you're alive. We're going to make it out of here."

"Because of you," Artigan says, his voice exhausted but still rich and dark and familiar, like the crackle of a woodfire, like a song she's always known. His face comes into view at last. She looks at him and it seems to her that maybe, just maybe, he finally sees her back.


End file.
